PAX 09: Editor Wrap-up (Of Smiting)

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Our final thoughts on the magic, mayhem and musk of the Penny Arcade Expo.

By Levi Buchanan, Ryan Geddes

With the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo now behind us, it's time to grab a beanbag chair, sit back, and reflect on the weekend that was. Tens of thousands of people descended on downtown Seattle, WA, for the show, and the world's largest videogame publishers were out in force, too. Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Valve, Blizzard, 2K, THQ and many more crowded onto the display floor of the Washington State Convention Center to show off their upcoming games and give away more T-shirts than a FEMA camp. And IGN was there to document it all.

Editors Levi Buchanan and Ryan Geddes started working the show Thursday evening and didn't stop wandering the halls of convention center, off-site events and industry watering holes of Seattle until late Sunday night. You can head over to our hub page to catch up on all of the IGN PAX 2009 coverage, including previews, news, videos and more. But that's only half the story of the wackiest weekend in gaming.

Now that the beanbag chairs have been sent off to be disinfected and the klieg lights above the Warhammer gaming tables have been switched off, we're ready to sit back and analyze the largest Penny Arcade Expo to date. What rocked our worlds and what made us sneer like fancy British waiters? Keep reading to find out.

Owned.

Ryan Geddes : This is the first time I've ever attended the Penny Arcade Expo, and I was really impressed with the amount of support publishers and developers threw into the event. All the big boys were on the floor, except for Activision, which smartly avoided the show floor because it knew it just didn't have the cool factor to hang with EA and Ubisoft.

Hang on. Geddes has to take this.We saw huge games like Assassin's Creed II, Halo 3: ODST and Uncharted 2. But we also caught glimpses of cool new indie projects like Shank and Dust. It was a good mix of big and small, old and new, retro and modern, digital and analog. I can't count the number of times I walked past clusters of people intently playing tabletop games like Warhammer. They never saw it coming when I flipped over their boards and ran away. Suckers.

At IGN, we go to a lot of trade shows and see most of these games months before the public. Consequently, most of what we saw at PAX was "old" - builds of games we'd already seen at the Electronic Entertainment Expo or Gamescom. But to the gamers who bought PAX passes and in many cases traveled long distances to be there, everything was new, fresh and exciting. And I have to say, it was pretty cool to be around that energy. Also, there were elf girls.

Levi Buchanan: This was my fourth PAX. It's come a long way since its origins over in Bellevue, back when it was a lot more card and tabletop games than videogames. This thing has grown in every direction, from the decision by mega-publishers to support the show -- Ubi had, what, three booths? -- to bigger names on panels to more cosplay. (Speaking of cosplay: would it really kill folks to blunt the edges on their homemade outfits and weapons?) And while that may make it much harder to cover than before, it also makes the show ten times cooler for folks that traveled from all over just to get their mitts on some new games and mingle with like-minded people.

It's the social aspect of PAX that I truly love. While I do spy a bit of posing here and there, this is largely one of the most positive gaming events I've ever attended. Really, Geddes, did you ever see anybody just scowling? (Well, besides me.) How often did we hear mean-spirited smack-talk during multiplayer games? Did you see anybody laugh and point at the iffier cosplayers? (Again, besides me. But, to be fair, that Spider-Man dude needs a codpiece. I don't care to see his snausage.) Not really. Everybody is there to have a great time and fill that weekend with memories. Whether it was getting to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 six months before release or just cuddle up next to a new friend on a beanbag, it seemed every PAX-goer I encountered was tasting a little gamer heaven for the weekend.

Eight seconds in hell.

Geddes: No mean-spirited smack-talk? You must not have been hanging out near the Halo 3: ODST area, where hardcore Halo fanatics got to test out the new Firefight mode. And I can't say I blame you, as it was consistently longest line at PAX. Things were said there that cannot be taken back. But the award for rowdiest booth has to go to Valve, who held epic Left 4 Dead 2 sessions all day long, 30 minutes at a stretch. When a particularly good team was thrown together, the overhead screens became magnets for cheering spectators. It was sort of like going to a sports bar for people who own 20-sided die.

Speaking of booths, is this the part where I get to loudly and roundly criticize Ubisoft for its continued insistence on hiring carnival barkers to demo Splinter Cell Conviction? They did it at E3, and I forgave them then because that show is overtly about selling (whether to media, publishers, distributors or retailers). But PAX attendees, on the whole, are more savvy than that, and I fear a lot of them were turned off by the sheer smarminess of it all. I know I was.

Really? Might have washed that one too many times.For those who were fortunate enough to miss it, picture Billy Mays (may he rest in peace) shouting things like "SAM FISHER LOVES TO HIDE IN THE SHADOWS LIKE A PANTHER" into the business end of a headset mic. If you didn't shudder when you read that, then you are probably an alien and need to be destroyed.

I have to say though, on the whole, I thought publishers treated gamers very well at PAX. You and I must have walked around that show floor 50 times and never once saw anyone manning the publisher booths get exasperated with gamers asking for T-shirts, posters, buttons, stickers and basically anything that wasn't nailed down. To a person, all the developers I spoke with - whether in the convention halls or after hours at the bars and on the street corners of Seattle - said they relished the opportunity to actually interact en masse with the people who keep them in business. Liars.

But enough about the attendees. Let's talk about the games. What did you see at PAX that really impressed you? Anything grab you, or was it all too much of the same content we've been seeing at shows all year long?